


the foxes hunt the hounds

by twofoldAxiom



Series: Chimeric'verse and Crash'verse [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Multi, Rebellion, The Helmsman Chimeric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:32:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3314081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone who doesn’t think you’ll pull through has left the ship. Everyone who thinks “To hell with it” has remained, and you couldn’t be more thankful for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a continuation of Cascade, I'm still working on that.

_Tonight, the foxes hunt the hounds  
_ _It's all over now be_ _f_ _ore it has begun  
_ _We've already won_

~!~

Your name is Sollux Captor and this may be the craziest thing you and the crew have ever attempted.

You go over the plans in your head, and as you do, the Cascade is steadily making its way back towards Empire space. After sweeps of avoiding it, after sweeps of convincing yourselves that you could run forever, you're heading back.

And you think to yourself, hey, you never  _were_  going to run forever. They would have caught up sooner or later, with luck like yours. It was good while it lasted, but now you- one ship, one crew, one fucked up, mixed up, quadrant-smearing clade of a crew- you're all going to do something you never thought you would.

You're going to help Feferi.

You understand that there is a massive chance all of you will die in the attempt, but it's been a long time coming. It's amazing Feferi even managed to extend her reach throughout the Meenah system like she did, but it's not enough.

And you think, this would be a good way to go. You're not young anymore. Aradia passed on a long time ago, and Tavros is following soon. You hear him in the back of your head, quietly humming to himself before going silent.

Everyone who doesn’t think you’ll pull through has left the ship. Everyone who thinks “To hell with it” has remained, and you couldn’t be more thankful for them.

The warp core is too hot to keep going so you come out of warp and disengage from the helm, and when your eyes start functioning like eyes again, you find Dave in front of you. You’re always a little surprised, even when you’re in the helm, that he can come in so quietly. You didn’t even see him through the viewports.

“’Sup.” He says, a quirk to the corner of his cracked lips.

You smile back and lean in to kiss him, sucking on his lower lip and letting him pin your back to the wall while the wires slide out of your ports. His hand comes up to one of your horns and you hitch a leg over his hip, moaning. Normally you’d protest the mess you two were about to make in the helmsblock, the stains you would leave in the bioware, but with the possibility of death looming on the horizon- and he’s human, he’s not as spry as he used to be, life in the Outer Reaches has aged them all so fast- you don’t give a singular fuck.

Well, except to him. You fuck, hard, sloppy, and long, and when it’s over you lay your head on his lap and let him play with your hair. You’re content to lie like that, and you wish it could be so forever.

You tangle your metal hand in his flesh one and kiss his scarred knuckles.

~!~

Empire space comes in far faster than you wish it would, and immediately you have to put on the cloaking and the shields. Normally you could do without, because you fly this ship faster than anyone but the helmsman of the Battleship Condescension itself, but you’ve been tracked before and you don’t want to risk it where so many ships could be waiting in ambush.

That line of thought makes you think of Feferi, and how she’s changed since you saw her at seven sweeps. She’s harder than she was; that much you know. For _all_ you know, for all that you’re _trusting_ her, she may well betray you. You shudder and spread a thin signal out across the void, too faint to pick up but just strong enough for you to find again if it bounces off anything, a handy trick you’d learned from fiddling with the ship. It gets you past the patrol ships, and you breathe a little easier.

To the right of you, Aradia’s ghost leans on your shoulder and you can pretend you can still feel the warmth of her hair. To the left, Dave, twenty-four sweeps old and still all flesh and blood, clutches your steel fingers and thumbs over your plastic knuckles. Karkat stands close, more Thresher Greyhunt than he has been in sweeps, and yet you can see the tension in his shoulders, how much he’s struggling to say nothing that’s already been said. How things have changed since you last saw New Alternia, rapidly entering the viewports in a blue-white blur.

Re-entry into the atmosphere is surprisingly smooth. The Cascade docks on a beach, where the remnants of human buildings line the horizon, the ruin of a human city that trolls never bothered reusing because there were no resources to strip from the area; it’s nothing but garbage and glass, the perfect place for Feferi to send her agents to you after a sweep of planning.

It’s there that the Cascade is taken apart and made anew. You have no idea where Feferi got these people, how there are so many of them with their expertise on her side, but you’re thankful as the ship is finished. The Empire is still looking for the Cascade, but it’s not the Cascade that rises into the lightening sky half a sweep after the changes are made.

You settle into the helm of the freshly re-christened Ascension, and immediately set course for the center of the Empire, Old Alternia.

~!~

It’s a long journey to find Feferi and her ramshackle fleet; they’re waiting in the dark corners of the Meenah system around the frigid planets too far from the vicious sun than can ever sustain even the chance of life. When she docks on the Ascension, the crew gives her a wide berth. She immediately makes for the helmsblock, and when she touches your face, you recoil.

You can’t deny that the spreading coolness from her touch is weirdly comforting though, and the wires around you mean you can’t get far when she places both hands on your cheeks.

“Shush, Sollux, I’m trying to thank you!” She says, her voice chipper-cheery and crystalline as you feel your body flood with that weird coolness. It makes your creaky limbs… lighter, somehow, as if they were real again.

Dave coughs behind her. She turns around and smiles ebulliently at him, and places her delicate fingers on his cheekbones too, holding him still when he tries to step back from her. You feel a sudden strange surge of protectiveness, a hot flush under your skin that makes you want to pull her away, but Dave’s skin is filled out and the crinkles around his eyes are gone when she removes her hands on her own. He looks at his hands- sturdy and young again, and you can’t see the way the tendons flex under the skin anymore.

You don’t understand, and you make it known with the look you give her. Her round, cheerful face falls somber. “I need you, all of you, if I’m going to take the Battleship Condescension. All of you as you were when you took the Cascade. Better than that, even.”

Dave’s expression doesn’t change. You already know he was against this from the start, but he’s with this because you’re with this, and you feel a stab of affection and something like guilt for it. It wasn’t your idea, but you can’t help it.

Feferi continues, clasping your hand and Dave’s in hers like a handfasting official (you wonder if she could do that for you, if Dave would want that, if you survive.) Her eyes are still grey behind her goggles somehow, and they gleam at the two of you. “I have faith in your abilities.” Abilities, not faith in _you._

But that will have to be good enough. When she lets go of you, you’re holding Dave’s hand tight, and you wonder that the bones don’t shift out of place like they have in the last five sweeps. He squeezes back.

Feferi brings her life-giving touch to the rest of the remaining crew, and amid the screams in the back of your head, you wonder if you’ll get to use it.

~!~

Your name is Sollux Captor and you’re in the Battleship Condescension. Outside, the Battleship Condescension is being attacked by the Ascension and the remainder of the crew manning it, while within, you’ve boarded with the others. The auxiliary cells have been filled to bursting, so there’s no danger of the cannons and shields running out of fuel while so few of the guns are actually engaged.

Your right arm has been sheared off by a plasma round that at least sealed the sparking wound. The fucker who injured you was decapitated by Dirk, spray of violet blood on the wall before he disappeared again. He’s amazingly fast now that he’s practically half his age.

You don’t get to ponder that. You drag Karkat into a supply closet and rip up a nearby sheet, use it as a makeshift tourniquet so he doesn’t bleed out from his ruined leg where it was shot off halfway down his thigh. He’s breathing hard, pale and sweaty with blood loss, and your remaining hand is sticky with it when you’re done wrapping him up.

You cup his face and kiss him, unabashedly affectionate, and his hazy eyes force focus on yours. “Stay alive, KK.” You say, memorizing where the supply closet is. You echo him from a bygone age with “I’ll come back for you.”

He nods and grasps your wrist, and his eyes say _I’ll conduct a séance just to kick your bitch ass if you die on me._ And it’s as close as he’ll ever get to saying the same.

Much as you loathe to do it, you have to leave him there and get back outside to the fighting, have to clear the ship so Feferi can challenge Her Imperious Condescension without the rest of the fleet getting in the way. The plan is to finish her before she can call for help or rip you all to pieces, and you’re running out of time.

You need to find her helmsman. **_The_** _Helmsman_ , you correct yourself. You need to disable him before she can command him to call for backup or self-destruct.

Dirk supplied you with a specialized piece of wiring that could interface you with the ship, and you rip out a panel in the wall and tear out some of the bioware you’re familiar with, exposing the security cameras’ nerves. You plug the end of Dirk’s wire into your temple, and then attach the squirming, fronded opposite end to the exposed nervous tissue.

You’re instantly given the feeling of being smacked in the face with electricity, before you’re mapping out the ship in your mind. Just before you can reach the helmsblock, you’re stopped by a psionic _boom_ that floors you, and a voice in your head.

“ _The piss-soaking fuck is you?”_ It asks. It sounds familiar, if shrill; every cell in your body is telling you _you know this voice,_ which is bizarre because you’ve never heard it before _._

You can feel your bloodpusher hammering against your ribs, sweat slicking your brow. Karkat groans behind you, but it seems far away in the haze of interfacing with the ship. You focus.

Another psionic boom, this one stuns you so hard that your vision blacks out. When you come back online, you growl. _“Look, whoever you are, I need to find the helmsblock.”_

_“Why?”_

“For fuck’s sake!” You mutter. You don’t have the time to be waiting on this mysterious disembodied voice, whoever the hell it is. You pull up the floor plans for the ship and try your damnedest to find the helmsblock that way, but you’re blocked again. You have to answer the voice. Whatever it is, troll, AI, a surprisingly clever carapacian for all you know, they aren’t leaving you alone until you answer.

“ _I’m the Chimeric, and I’m here to send out a distress signal.”_

_“Bullshit, the Helmsman Chimeric is on the Cascade. And the hell do you need to send out a distress signal for? We’re all fucked. Fucked, fucked, fucked like a whore at the Mirthful Church.”_

Something explodes a hall ahead, probably someone firing a plasma round into some unlucky fuck (don’t let it be Dave).

“Just a minute, come on.” You murmur, praying almost. You turn your attention back to the stubborn voice. _“Look, it doesn’t matter who I am, I need to get to the helmsblock and do something about all this. Get out of my way.”_

_“Make me.”_

You punch the wall and disengage the wire. Looks like you’re doing this the old-fashioned way.

You leave your hiding place and burst through the halls crackling with psionic energy, ripping apart Imperial officers left and right. By the time you find the familiar carapace of the stairway to the helmsblock, you’re dripping the whole spectrum and probably a little less sane than you were before you got here.

You descend the steps and blast open the door to the helmsblock, coolant fluid washing off most of the blood beneath your knees. When you look up at the Helmsman, you’re floored again- this time because your vision is suddenly overlaid, as if you were looking at yourself at least thirteen sweeps ago.

It takes you a moment to realize that this is The Helmsman.

It takes you another moment to realize that this is _your ancestor._


	2. Chapter 2

He grins at you, fucked up teeth mirroring yours, too large for his mouth. Behind the goggles grafted to his face, his eyes flash, red-blue-red-blue.

“Holy shit.” He says, raspy-voiced with disuse, and he _laughs._

You shake your head, because people are dying above you, you don’t have time for any conversation. You float up to him and apologize before you rip out one of his feeders, making him howl, and then you feed the squirming tendrils of Dirk’s wire into his head.

You plug the other end into your temple to his frenzied cries of “What are you doing- what the fuck is this-“And you ignore him- until he slams you into a wall with his psionics. It’s a weak, basic pulse of energy, but it caught you by surprise so hard that you slide down the opposite wall and splash into the coolant below.

He’s glaring at you. You pick yourself up, dripping coolant with the crusting blood now, and it burns your skin a little. His mouth twists into a furious grimace. “The fuck do you think you are?”

You raise your hands. “I need to do this, okay? I’m not going to call for help- I need to cut you off before she _does.”_

You float up to him again and take hold of the end of the wire, and he watches your hands- you see his eyes flick to the ports on your ribs just before you plug the wire into your temple, and then sparks pop around you before you can react, pinning your arms to your sides.

“What the _hell!_ ” You struggle, kicking the bioware as he draws you closer. It’s grotesque, seeing him up close. There are tracks of dried blood on his cheeks, fine scars on his skin where the biowires have tunneled and grown in. His horns are long and cracked, and you can see that the ends of them have been filed down so they don’t pierce the delicate feeders and cut anything.

“I’ve been alive that long.” He murmurs, turning you this way and that. You struggle harder, crackle with your own power- there are people _dying_ on this ship, you can hear their voices dropping quiet in your head every second, more and more, and some of them you recognize. (You don’t hear Dave yet, or Karkat, or Kanaya, which you’re thankful for.) You kick him again; hard enough that you see a print left in the meaty wiring before it fills out again. His eyes are distant. “I never thought I’d see my descendant.”

“Yeah, well, I need to do a little more than look right now, before someone realizes I’m down here!” Your own power crackles between your horns, and unlike him, you aren’t being siphoned by the helm; you force your hands to move with them like you did so long ago, when you were still getting used to being re-limbed. You grab hold of the wire and finally jam it into your temple with so much force that it stings.

Your mind plunges through his like a blade- and you’re immediately engulfed by the enormity of it. It’s like the feeling you get when you float over the hull of the Ascension, except you know you’re in cyberspace, on some level you know you’re staring in shock at your ancestor because the inner machinations of the Battleship Condescension are greater and more complex than even that of the Ascension.

You feel lost until another consciousness brushes your own, bright-hot and alien, ancient. It takes hold of you and guides you through the maze of subroutines and alarms, and you realize, he’s had centuries to learn the inside of the ship where you only had a paltry few sweeps, just how impossibly old is he, how much does he know, how come he never freed himself then?

But that doesn’t matter when you hear him murmur against the top of your head. “You can do this.” And he lets go.

You spiral through the sudden flood of information, feeling like your cranium might burst with it all, but somehow you reach through the tangle and yank something free. When you come back to yourself, the only light in the block is coming from your eyes and his. You can hear the panic from above in the darkness, can feel the thrum of energy inundating the air.

That must be it, then. You’ve done your part, and now you have to get back up there, leave him in the dark until the fighting’s over and you can decide what to do with the yellowblood who’s lived longer than most seadwellers.

You fly up the stairs and don’t look back.

~!~

You’re tired, you’re sore, and you can hardly believe everything that’s happened, but you’re alive.

The fighting takes out more people than you want to think about. You vomited after it was over, the stress of the voices becoming too much for you to handle. The hallways stink of plasma and seared flesh, and there are so many bodies that when they’re fed into the furnace, the auxiliary power brings the lights back on. The blood and char on the walls is everywhere.

You wipe your mouth on the back of your hand and frown when you remember it’s not skin. Everyone’s gathered on the bridge, everyone who isn’t too injured to move or dead. The injured ones have been taken to the medbay, Karkat included, and somehow Kanaya’s survived a plasma round to the gut that should have severed her in half and _is still bustling around._

“You need to take it easy.” You tell her, and she looks at you mournfully, but at least sits down, conducting the makeshift medical staff like a queen from her throne.

Those of you who can walk- you, the Striders, Rose, Jane, a handful of others- find Feferi.

You’re sure you’re staring at some massive, black beast, slain at her feet when you find her. There are tears streaming down her face, of pain or exhaustion or relief you don’t know, but she looks at all of you and smiles as she yanks her double-headed trident out of the body of Her Imperious Condescension. Fuschia blood pools under the corpse.

“It’s done.” She says. Slowly, one-by-one, you come to your knees and bow your heads to your new Empress.

~!~

Not long after the cleanup then comes the question of the Helmsman. You explain what you’ve found, and you bring them to the helmsblock where he hangs in the shadows. He looks balefully at all of you as you enter, especially Feferi. You get the feeling he’d spit at her feet if he could muster the strength.

“He’s been here since… for centuries, really.” You say, and Feferi frowns while you look up at him, his chopped-up hair and his filed-down horns. “Now that the Condesce is dead, what are you going to do about him?”

“I could keep him.” She says, blithe but quiet, thinking to herself. “I could keep the Battleship Condescension, I could use it to spread my reach, like she did-“

“You aren’t her.” Dirk cuts in, and there’s an edge of pain in his voice that has nothing to do with his battle wounds. “And it wouldn’t be fair to him to do that. Why not ask what he wants? The kinder treatment of helmsmen is something you were pushing for, right?”

“… Right.” She says, in a way that makes the back of your neck prickle. But she steps forward and looks up at him, while he glowers down at her. “What do you want?”

He says two words, and the block rings quietly with them.

“But,” Feferi pipes up not long after. “Think of all the good you could do under me! Think of where we could go, think of-“

He cuts her off with a cackle, his voice steadily rising until it’s a cracked, anguished horror to listen to. “Think of what’s been taken from me, think of what I’ve been forced to do for sweeps and sweeps and sweeps and _sweeps,_ princess. Think of what my descendant went through, what all helmsmen go through, and multiply that by longer than he- either of us- should e _ver_ live to see. I am _the_ mother _fucking_ Helmsman, and I can’t _take it anymore._ Why do you think I didn’t trip the signal when you boarded the ship?”

Spit trails down the corner of his mouth, and he breathes hard. It’s Dirk’s turn to step forward, a hand raised, and he looks so small beneath the helmsblock here that it’s surreal. “We could have you relimbed, like we did for your descendant. We’re not in a hurry like we did for him, so we could definitely do a cleaner job. We could have you back on your feet within the season.”

The Helmsman shakes his head, his chin pressed against his jutting collarbones. “There ain’t no life I want to lead after all this time. I wouldn’t be able to. Not without them. And what would I do outside of the ship? I don’t even remember my own name.” His voice drops to a pained whisper. “Have some _mercy_ and _end me._ I can’t do it myself. _”_

You can see him trembling. You take a step backwards.

Feferi, beside you, grips your shoulder. Her touch is cool and lingers with the strange life energy she passed onto you before she lets go, and then she picks up her trident and levels it with the Helmsman’s chest. “You’re sure you want this?” She asks one more time.

“Please.” He says. She throws her weight behind the shaft.

~!~

Feferi is officially crowned Her Imperial Reformation half a season later, and finishes it up by handfasting Gamzee on the same night. The crew of the Ascension is pardoned its charges, and she makes it a formal gift to them for helping her take her rule. Terezi and Eridan are even invited to the party, and when you meet them, Eridan’s aghast face at the sight of you makes Terezi cackle.

“No hard feelings, Mister Appleberry; it’s not my job to hunt you down anymore.” She says, and plucks the cherry off your slice of cake.

You can’t help but feel a little uncomfortable in formal dress after so long in nothing but a ratty pair of jeans, but Feferi and Kanaya refused to let all of you go without gussying you up and having a ball. Karkat seems even less comfortable than you, but he’s been in the threshecutioner corps long enough to still retain a sense of not showing it- and besides, his prosthetic leg is more than enough to distract him.

“Something we have in common, now.” You tell him, tracing the scar where it meets his hip through his slacks. He flicks your nose.

Dave has never been in any sort of militia and keeps picking at his clothes, which makes Roxy laugh. Rose politely hides her mouth behind a fan, but you can see the smile in both her now-bionic eyes. Jane dances the night away as much as she can.

Jake and Jade nip each other where they think no one’s looking. Dirk watches the party from the shadows until Kanaya, fully healed now thanks to some mystery of rainbowdrinker biology you don’t understand, chats him up.

Some people aren’t there. You note blank spaces where they could have been- John regaling scandalized highbloods with his japery, Equius and Nepeta elbowing each other over hors d’oeuvres, Tavros and Aradia and so many others.

But then Dave blocks your view of everything and hooks an arm over your shoulder. “I still can’t believe we got through all that. We’re probably jetted out an airlock and this is our dying dream, so I say we live it up, get out of here, and do something that’s actually fun.”

You smile at him and bump him with your hip. “You fucking pailhound.”

He pretends to look offended. “Hey now, I didn’t suggest pailing, but I wouldn’t be opposed.”

You laugh and kiss him, tasting fruit on his lips. Thinking back on everything, you’re amazed you made it this far and made it out. You raise a toast to the newly-crowned Empress and gulp it down.

**Author's Note:**

> Answering an anon on askthehelmsmanchimeric that sent the prompt "We've already won." I don't think they were expecting this. I wasn't expecting this. Content is based more on the tone of the song than the actual lyrics.
> 
> AU Ending to the askthehelmsmanchimeric 'verse, based on that one line.
> 
> I may write an AU-of-an-AU-of-an-AU bad end later, but for now, yay, happy endings! 
> 
> Please give me notice if I forget to tag anything.


End file.
